Learning to live with the virus” is one of the insidious formulations of this omicron spring and summer.
On the one hand, it is the closing line formula of those who – with the number of cases increasing – want the end of the pandemic to be announced.
On the other hand, for many it contains a previously unfounded hope that the highly infectious but supposedly “milder” omicron pathogen could be the last chapter in our fight against SARS-CoV-2.
The aftermath that contact with the pandemic virus can have for many people is also completely ignored.
Patients with "Long Covid" must indeed learn to live with the virus and its hustle and bustle.
Weeks and months after the acute infection, they are still suffering from the consequences of the virus multiplying in their bodies.
Joachim Müller-Jung
Editor in the feuilleton, responsible for the "Nature and Science" department.
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After all, some may have breathed a sigh of relief a few days ago: The risk of long Covid has halved after the latest of numerous inventories in Great Britain with Omikron: Compared to the around 4500 long-term patients reported via app among 41,300 corona cases (10.8 percent) in of the delta variant era a year ago, six months to nine months after an omicron infection, 2,500 of 56,000 cases (4.5 percent) still reported long-Covid symptoms.
What the study by King's College London, published in the British medical journal "Lancet", does not say: not all omicrons are the same.